Lol we're not discussing traits or projecting superstardom. Mayo is playing better basketball right now, and that's all i'm discussing. Mayo is the better basketball player right now. If you want to reply with anything other than "i think Harden is better", go right ahead. Every stat imaginable says otherwise.

There's a difference between being the better basketball player and having the more impressive season. There's a case for Mayo having the more impressive season so far, but there is no case for Mayo being the better basketball player.

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BK

Quote:

Originally Posted by AcheTen

JPP is a better and more productive player than Brandon Graham

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Originally Posted by abaddon41_80

Is Shaun Hill a top 10 QB? Definitely not. Is he a top 20 one? Almost certainly.

Except PER, Wins Added and Value added. And turnover rate and assist rate. And offensive rebounding and a higher usage rate. But, sure, just know that the "right now" discussion is pointless and lends itself to statistical anomalies like David Lee playing better than LaMarcus Aldridge right now.

I don't get why you'd think a higher usage rate is something favoring Harden. PER is inflated due to the excess amount of shots he takes. I already covered that. Mayo went to a better team, wins added is meaningless to me. Why would we compare assist rates when one plays a lot of PG and the other is strictly a SG? Look at the AS%, and how ridiculously low it is for Harden. Guy is a ball stopper on offense, only 29% of his FGs made have been assisted compared to Mayo's 51%. Their rebounds per 48 minutes are virtually identical.

I really don't care about not signing anyone else considering you can lock up those 4 for the next 5 years. I just don't. Vet mins will flock, rookies, etc....it's not that hard. If they amnestied Perkins and signed Harden, they would have to pay a small luxury tax which they could easily afford due to a number of factors that were written about ad nauseum.

Well that's fairly obvious when you want a team who is over the cap already to dish out another max contract. And even if they did skate by initially, every year that KD's and Westbrook's contracts sky even higher and makes it that much harder to manage. But yea, trading Harden was a really bad idea you can tell just by watching the Thunder this year right? I don't think it's very smart at all to put all your money into 4 players, then fill out a roster full of vet minimum players.

Until Ibaka gets into foul trouble and Harden gets hurt. OKC has a really deep, talented team, built around KD and Westbrook which is why they have been so good, not because they toss their money into a few players and take scraps afterwards.

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Originally Posted by Rob S

Yeah, but Harden can, you know, actually sustain/will almost certainly improve on those numbers. You actually think Mayo, a career 39% shooter from 3, is going to keep this up? GL with that, he's gonna crash hard. His year so far is a massive, massive outlier.

So we can say for a fact that Harden is going to improve on his 25ppg average then huh? Because you say so? Because it's not like we are talking about a guy who has a long track record of starting at all so for us to say 1 way or another whether he will improve is just projecting so it's hard for me to buy into the reasoning your giving.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott Wright

I guarantee that if someone picks Cam Newton in the Top 5 they will regret it.

I don't get why you'd think a higher usage rate is something favoring Harden. PER is inflated due to the excess amount of shots he takes. I already covered that. Mayo went to a better team, wins added is meaningless to me. Why would we compare assist rates when one plays a lot of PG and the other is strictly a SG? Look at the AS%, and how ridiculously low it is for Harden. Guy is a ball stopper on offense, only 29% of his FGs made have been assisted compared to Mayo's 51%. Their rebounds per 48 minutes are virtually identical.

His high usage rate tells me he has a hell of a lot more to do with his team's surprising good start than Mayo has to do with the Mavs. We can compare assist rates because, i don't know, it's a meaningful stat considering Harden not only scores more but also dishes more. The low assist% is a huge positive.....that's a superstar trait right there. That means he can actually create his own shot. You're just hurting your case here......

Mayo may be having having the more impressive year considering who he is and what talent he has a s a basketball player. Harden is and always will be the better player.

Furthermore, I'll say that Mayo is an average (at best) #2 option. You will never, ever win a title with Mayo as your second best player. Never.

Hahahah, wtf are you talking about dude? Who was the Mavs second best player when they won the title a few years ago? Jason Kidd? Tyson Chandler? Or have you only started following who won championships since a few months ago? I hate ignorant comments. Let's just post a ton of irrational post that nobody can prove wrong (like how Harden is guaranteed to improve his numbers, Mayo is guaranteed to drop his, and nobody will ever win a championship with Mayo as the #2 player). Gotta love those arguments.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott Wright

I guarantee that if someone picks Cam Newton in the Top 5 they will regret it.

PER is not a good stat, and there are much better statistics out there. And "Billy Bean'ing" the NBA is stupid, because Bill James did that for baseball.

I don't really care who came up with all those MLB stats, i'm too dumb and lazy to learn and differentiate all of them with like 29871234918 baseball players with contracts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob S

His high usage rate tells me he has a hell of a lot more to do with his team's surprising good start than Mayo has to do with the Mavs. We can compare assist rates because, i don't know, it's a meaningful stat considering Harden not only scores more but also dishes more. The low assist% is a huge positive.....that's a superstar trait right there. That means he can actually create his own shot. You're just hurting your case here......

Mayo may be having having the more impressive year considering who he is and what talent he has a s a basketball player. Harden is and always will be the better player.

Why would you compare assist rates between guys who don't play the same position? That's stupid. One guy is a PG, one is a SG. A PG's job is to distribute and assist other players, hence the higher assist numbers. That's his job, and even when you consider the fact that he's not a full time PG, the difference in assists between the two is marginal.

The low assist% means he's a ball stopping chucker, but you can interpret that however you please.

Hahahah, wtf are you talking about dude? Who was the Mavs second best player when they won the title a few years ago? Jason Kidd? Tyson Chandler? Or have you only started following who won championships since a few months ago? I hate ignorant comments. Let's just post a ton of irrational post that nobody can prove wrong (like how Harden is guaranteed to improve his numbers, Mayo is guaranteed to drop his, and nobody will ever win a championship with Mayo as the #2 player). Gotta love those arguments.

Tyson Chandler and Jason Kidd were both really good players, so I don't see your point. OJ Mayo doesn't pass, rebound, or defend nearly as well as those two.

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Originally Posted by MetSox17

Funny enough, Russ is the one that kept them competitive that series and Harden was the one that imploded and shat himself for five games.

Well that's fairly obvious when you want a team who is over the cap already to dish out another max contract. And even if they did skate by initially, every year that KD's and Westbrook's contracts sky even higher and makes it that much harder to manage. But yea, trading Harden was a really bad idea you can tell just by watching the Thunder this year right? I don't think it's very smart at all to put all your money into 4 players, then fill out a roster full of vet minimum players.

Until Ibaka gets into foul trouble and Harden gets hurt. OKC has a really deep, talented team, built around KD and Westbrook which is why they have been so good, not because they toss their money into a few players and take scraps afterwards.

It's not like they lose all the depth they have now.....just Perkins. And we'll see come playoffs....Thunder were always going to be a good regular season team regardless. They have the 2nd best player in the NBA and another top 10 player. Just wait until Westbrick shows up in playoffs without Harden to check him. They would have probably been swept by the Spurs last year if it wasn't for Harden

So we can say for a fact that Harden is going to improve on his 25ppg average then huh? Because you say so? Because it's not like we are talking about a guy who has a long track record of starting at all so for us to say 1 way or another whether he will improve is just projecting so it's hard for me to buy into the reasoning your giving.

I can't say anything for a fact.....I just think, like most rational people, that statistics will normalize. Mayo probably won't keep shooting 50% from three and Harden probably will improve upon his 43% shooting percentage. He may not (and the Harden thing may not happen because of the increased defensive focus on him), but predication is in many cases a battle of "what's most likely to happen". THe stats don't lie in this regard.

Hahahah, wtf are you talking about dude? Who was the Mavs second best player when they won the title a few years ago? Jason Kidd? Tyson Chandler? Or have you only started following who won championships since a few months ago? I hate ignorant comments. Let's just post a ton of irrational post that nobody can prove wrong (like how Harden is guaranteed to improve his numbers, Mayo is guaranteed to drop his, and nobody will ever win a championship with Mayo as the #2 player). Gotta love those arguments.

You are ignorant if you think Mayo will ever be a better/more important player to a team than Tyson Chandler was in those playoffs. That's just ridiculously dumb.

I get that, but that should have been a red flag for anyone who thought/thinks that Harden was a superstar at that point. As soon as he ran into the Heat's defense, he was terrible. He's been terrible a lot this year against good defensive teams, and his splits have suffered because of the increased usage and increased time playing against starters. I don't get how people just wanna ignore that like it isn't happening.

Does he have potential to be a superstar? Yeah, he showed it last year during the playoffs when he got hot. But i'm not in the least bit surprised that he hasn't been able to sustain NEARLY the same level of efficiency as he did last year, and it has been due to fairly predictable reasons.

Nobody can argue that Harden didn't **** himself in finals. It is also damn near impossible to argue that they would've made the finals without him. He was their best player vs the Spurs. And I love Westbrook, but he needs someone to check him; Harden helped massively in that regard.

Nobody can argue that Harden didn't **** himself in finals. It is also damn near impossible to argue that they would've made the finals without him. He was their best player vs the Spurs. And I love Westbrook, but he needs someone to check him; Harden helped massively in that regard.

They just took turns hogging the ball and keeping it from Durant, lol.

Tyson Chandler and Jason Kidd were both really good players, so I don't see your point. OJ Mayo doesn't pass, rebound, or defend nearly as well as those two.
.

My point is that someone could have just as easily said "you will never win a championship with Jason Kidd as your 2nd best player at that age" but guess what? It happened. You just can't make blanket statements like that because they make no sense. We don't know what type of fit Mayo would be on the team, who would be coaching, who is around him, who would be the #1, etc. Nobody thought the Mavs would have won a championship with those guys at #2 players, but nobody saw Dirk turning into that clutch of a player, or Carlisle coaching like a genius, or the tons of pieces on the team beyond just the top 2 or 3 players.

So that's why it's stupid to make a statement like that and not take anything into consideration. Sure he's not winning a championship here because Dirk isn't that same Dirk and the depth isn't the same. But it annoys me when people make statements that you can't even prove. At all. I'm not taking anything away from the players on that Mavs team because I know more then anyone how good and important they were, but it was a collective effort. You have Mayo as the #2 scorer, and build the right pieces on that team with a dominant #1 who can take over games and you most certainly could win a title. Nobody said anything about Mayo carrying a team there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob S

You are ignorant if you think Mayo is a better/more important to that team than Tyson Chandler. That's just ridiculously dumb.

Where did I ever say anything close to that? The ignorant comment was saying "you will never win a title with Mayo as your #2 option". That's pure ignorance. Someone likely could had said the exact same thing about Chandler 3 years ago too. I shouldn't have to explain to you why that makes no sense to say that.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott Wright

I guarantee that if someone picks Cam Newton in the Top 5 they will regret it.